The Early Bird Catches the Worm!

The jury is still out on Laser Pegs – I’ll review them in another post!

One of the benefits of having a clan of early risers is that we can squeeze in a whole birthday celebration – celebratory breakfast, opening cards and presents, and even trying out one of the new gifts – before having to head off to school at 8 a.m.!

Our oldest turned 9 years old yesterday! Since he had to go to school during the day and play in a baseball game in the evening, we did some of our celebrating over the weekend. We started on Sunday afternoon by taking the whole family on an ice skating adventure, and decided to have a special dinner (pork tenderloin, one of his favorites) and birthday cake (my first attempt at strawberry cake – it was way too sweet, but I’ll try again!) that night. Since he has always been an early riser, we knew that he would have plenty of time to open his cards and gifts on Monday morning, and we were right! Everyone tried to branch out a bit this year with their gifts, which have consisted almost entirely of Legos in the past. This year he received lots of fun cards, a Laser Pegs set, a badminton set, an Erector set, two small Lego sets, the game Minecraft for the computer (we thought and thought about this for a couple of years and finally decided to give it a try), and some money for summer camp. His sisters also bought him some Frosted Flakes, a pack of bubblegum, and a small set of excavation tools – they know him so well. Pretty exciting for a 9 year-old boy – thanks to our extended family!

I’ll write another post regarding our approach to computer game time in another post, but for now, a blessed Tuesday to all of you! Mary, Virgin Most Prudent, pray for us!

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Happy Birthday to your son! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on computer/electronic time – my nearly 9 year old son told us the other day our electronics/computer rules were almost medieval. I didn’t know if I should be impressed he knew what medieval was or insulted by the commentary. My husband told him if we let him have more computer/electronic time he wouldn’t have read the books on medieval knights, etc., and it therefore justifies our ideas. LOL. Needless to say my son was less than impressed with the rationale! If you are a looking for a future present and haven’t already discovered SnapCircuits – my lego crazy 6 and 8 year boys love those sets – and actually work together on them. The SnapCircuits held their attention longer than erector sets.

Juris Mater

Katrina, hilarious… we have two birthdays this week, as well as a First Communion, baseball, school play, and the list goes on. We were trying to figure out how to squeeze in Joseph’s birthday celebration on Friday, my husband suggested before school, and then we both just burst out laughing. We are NOT a morning family. Nobody talks to anyone else, we are all on autopilot, barely-dressed kids brush their hair and eat their breakfast in the car. We are going to celebrate the night before instead! Hey, we’re Catholic, it’s his Birthday Vigil.

Kellie “Red”

A Vigil birthday would be the way to go around here too! We are NOT morning people, and we all try to avoid speaking to one another as much as possible in the morning, haha!

texasmommy

Happy Birthday, C! Love how you have to get creative sometimes!

Brynne

Happy birthday to your son! I wanted to say that you’ve made an extremely good gaming choice with Minecraft. My oldest son comes home with intricate plans for his Minecraft ideas on the back of finished worksheets. It’s very open ended and allows children to develop their creativity in a very modern way.

http://www.buildingcathedrals.com Katrina

Brynne, it’s such an interesting concept for a game…He has played it with other friends at their houses, and is totally enthralled. It’s like Legos on the computer, basically, so of course he loves it! My concern has been that it’s online, right? Have you done anything in the “settings” of the game to protect privacy, or has it not really been an issue? We’re going to have to play around with it, and then I’m sure that I’ll feel more comfortable!

Kathy

Saoirse – be impressed that he knew how to use medieval in his “commentary”.

Kathy

Birthday Vigils are a great idea. As at our house everyone has their own birthday month – we celebrate that way too. I have a special “Happy Birthday to you” plate that matches my everyday dishes and the b-day month person gets to use it everyday of their birth month. Depending on what’s going on – we will schedule all of the birthday festivities throughout the month. It lightens the stress on having to get everything done in one day, a adds joy to all of us having something to celebrate and the birthday person has an entire month to enjoy!

Bethany “B-mama”

Many days later–happy birthday to our godson, who is growing and thriving and 9!!! WOWOWOW! We are so proud of the little man he is becoming. God bless and prayers!!